


Need a Love Reaction

by Wolf_Storm



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hand Jobs, Heartbeat Kink, Kissing, M/M, Mentions of Panic Attacks, Sexual Content, Warming Up, smut (sort of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 14:34:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3771886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_Storm/pseuds/Wolf_Storm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Kieren's heart suddenly beats again, and Simon wants to hear it running.</p>
<p>Rated E to be sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Need a Love Reaction

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everybody! Finally, after months of procrastinating I pulled a Siren fic because frankly I love these two undead boys more than life. They deserve to be happy and with the show being cancelled by the BBC they need to be happy in fanfics at least.
> 
> Written with a friend in mind, and on request of other friends. This marks my first time of writing something explicitly shippy and even then I believe I've stretched the definition of smut as far as it goes... well, maybe I'll get better in time. Many thanks to [IspyIssy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/IspyIssy) for beta-ing this work!
> 
> Title taken from the lyrics of "Dancing in the Dark" by Bruce Springsteen, beautifully covered by Amy Macdonald.
> 
> I do not own In the Flesh, its contents, or the characters present in this story. They belong to Dominic Mitchell and (sadly) to the BBC as far as we know. If I owned them instead of the BBC no such stupidity as cancelling the show would occur.
> 
> The author does not consent for this work to be reposted, altered or used in public presentation without her permission. If you witness this work or its contents being posted anywhere but here on AO3 under this account, or being publicly presented, please contact me through my blog [here](http://wolflioness.tumblr.com/ask) or my [twitter](https://twitter.com/Elven_storm).

 

The morning rays pierce undisturbed through the drawn-back curtains and onto the two forms lying unmoving in the bed. Illuminated ashen white skin lights up, shows purplish veins underneath and catches around the edges of slit wrists and track marks.

The sun shining into his eyes through sealed lids is what first causes Kieren drift awake. He blinks several times, unused to wake up in late morning, and realizes he’s lying on his side with his back against Simon’s chest, one of the sleeping Irishman’s arms around his waist with the hand gently grasping the fabric of Kieren’s T-shirt, the other under his head.

Kieren blinks some more, trying to identify the strange feeling that’s gripping at his brain. Something’s odd, new and off, he just can’t put a finger on it. (Did he take his dose yesterday? He’s been forgetting so many things lately that it wouldn’t surprise him if he didn’t take it… except that he did, he now remembers Simon giving it to him, the way it hit his nerves like fire and made him claw onto his own skin and the worry in Simon’s white eyes when the fit stopped.)

He gently wriggles from under Simon’s arm (has to loosen up his fingers one by one; Simon clings to him in sleep and dislikes letting go, even freed from Kieren’s shirt his hand wraps itself around the boy’s wrist), drops a featherlight kiss where his head has been resting on the inside of Simon’s elbow till now (not that Simon will feel it, but he also will not feel the pins and needles from having someone sleep right on his blood vessels for hours - small advantages of being partially deceased), swings his legs over the edge of the mattress and stands up.

However, the moment Kieren’s upright his vision goes black around the edges, his legs are suddenly weak and unable to support his weight (and that is weird, he isn’t supposed to feel his limbs, right, right?!) and a sort of steely pressure clamps itself onto his brain. He hears himself cry out as he falls on his back on the bed, hands grasping on his head and hitting Simon’s legs in the process.

In a split-second he flashes back to his pre-death years when fear used to pull at his nerves like strings on a guitar, push him into the corner or his room and squeeze at his lungs until he couldn’t draw in a breath, his hands were clammy and cold and riddled with jitters and his heart was beating as furiously as hooves of racing horses inside his head. Something is beating in his ears even now, angry and deafening, hammering at the insides of Kieren’s skull in irregular double beats that resonate into the barely functioning grey-white mass of neurons, glial cells and broken connections. Technically he doesn’t need air to survive now but he feels like drowning in muddy water nonetheless.

That must be it, he thinks. The medication stopped working altogether, and he is turning rabid again. He’s been secretly dreading that for weeks now - first the tremors that wouldn’t stop, then the nosebleeds, absence spells, the horrifying seizure that surprised him outside of his parents’ house, memory lapses, things falling out of his hands… this must be it, then. His sanity is finally slipping for good. Thank God that he’s at the bungalow instead of his family home, at least he won’t hurt anyone before Simon can dispose of him, at least he won’t hurt Jem again...

Then he hears Simon’s voice, calling to him through the foggy veil. Large hands run into his hair and along his arms (and how come he feels that happening through his dead nerve endings?), speaking in hushed tones that still bear clear concern. He’s repeating something on and on, oh it’s his name, he can make out that much but the boom-boom, boom-boom in his ears is so loud and Simon’s hands are so cold where they press into the side of his neck…

In the next blink of his eyes Kieren is sitting up, breathing ragged as if he just ran a marathon, and he realizes that he does need the oxygen. Does need air in his lungs, and it’s helping. It’s helping because the beating in his ears is his heart that supplies his body with blood that is now in his veins and it needs oxygen to do its job.

His heart is beating. After five years of being silent, it’s fluttering among his ribs like it’s unsure of its own job, running five beats in three second and silencing for two before surging again with a jump. To be completely frank, it hurts, it burns - not much yet, but enough to be noticeable and bordering on bothersome. His myocard spent years being unmoving, deprived of oxygen, sitting on the knot of empty vessels after Kieren drained his body of as much blood as his good, gentle heart could pump out before finally giving out. Life poured out of him through jagged cuts halfway up his elbows and now it’s back by a miracle.

Kieren doesn’t know what to think of it. It’s too much at once - he can feel the bedsheets rubbing on the bare skin of his feet, the structure of his hair where his fingers are still clasped around his skull, he can feel Simon’s hands frantically running over his body, seeking for what is troubling him. He can feel the warm sunlight around the haphazardly sewn evidence of his unwillingness to live. Even his vision seems somewhat clearer. Brighter, the colours more prominent - he didn’t realize his partially deceased eyes took the world in with any kind of disturbance in perfection before but they obviously did because now his sight is just better. Rushing, he lowers one hand onto his chest to make absolutely sure.

Thump-thump. Thump-thump. - - -  

Thump-thumpthumpthumpthump…

Kieren’s vision goes blurred around the edges now and in his shock he barely registers that he can cry now too. He slowly turns his head to look at Simon, still shocked and unknowing and very, very concerned.

“What is it?” the Irishman asks in a whispery tone. “Kieren?”

Kieren blinks to clear his vision off the excessive display of sentiment. “It’s… my heart,” he says, voice shaking and breaking halfway. Without further ado, he takes Simon’s hand in his own and places it over his own chest, onto the middle and with the fingers a bit to the left to give his loves the full experience of the echos that rattle through his bones and skin.

The answer he gets comes in the form of a quizzical look and a frown that could almost pass for comical, yet does not show any comprehension in the slightest. If anything, Simon appears even more baffled by the situation than he did a minute ago.

“M-my heart… is beating,” Kieren says, suddenly unsure of himself. Could it be a trick his mind is playing on him? Could he be losing his wits before going completely rabid? But no, it can’t be, he feels the self-serving 10 ounces of muscle dancing to the music of electric impulses created under its own conduction. The rhythm is slowing slightly, the off-beats getting fewer and further in between as his heart learns to do its job well again without skipping beats - it can no longer afford to miss any. It is there. It works. So how come Simon…

“Oh,” Kieren breathes. “You can’t feel it, can you?”

Naturally, Kieren’s body has awoken during the night but Simon’s sense of touch has not. As an undead person, he cannot feel anything short of being hit or pushed. Nothing less will make his nerve endings register the pressure, not even the cadence of the heart that loves him so dearly. Not now, anyway.

For some reason, it makes Kieren feel cheated out quite significantly. The air in the bedroom is suddenly heavy and the pins and needles that hold his re-igniting insides travel all the way into the back of his eyes. He can sense more tears forming behind his eyelids.

Then, Simon surprises him by taking his hand away from his chest but instead putting both palms on Kieren’s shoulders, pushing him gently till he’s lying on his back across the mattresses. With no words to waste, the Irishman climbs over the boy’s frame and gently lowers himself right next to him, stone-cold body pressed into the length of Kieren’s side, and lays his ear on the spot where his hand previously failed, and… succeeds.

Kieren’s arms wrap gently around him then, securing him in place as he concentrates on the renewed life beating under him. He puts one hand on the soft skin of Kieren’s flank where his T-shirt has ridden up a bit. The contact of his death-cold fingers on Kieren’s skin, he doesn’t notice, but he sees the boy’s abdominal muscles contracting slightly at the touch  and the slightly sharper intake of breath that follows (means Kieren’s flesh must be warm now, if the difference in their body temperature is enough to make him flinch).

Very carefully - he does not feel the pressure behind fingers and doesn’t want to hurt Kieren now that his skin can break and bruise and bleed again - he runs his hand slowly across his lover’s abdomen, spreading his palm out wide, covering most of the thin waist with his outstretched fingers. He watches, fascinated, as the still pale skin dimps slightly under the pad of his index finger (does not break or scale, is slowly acquiring a more living colour tone) and fills out again as the pressure fades. Simon wishes he could feel the texture, know if it’s as soft as it looks (must be), how warm it is or what it smells like, what is the taste of it, measure the pulse in the point a hand’s width above the belly button...

The goosebumps under his touch raise up only a moment after the heartbeat in his ear picks up pace and a deep exhale escapes Kieren’s lips.

Simon twists his head back up, a cocky smile spreading on his face as he shifts up, dropping a sloppy, messing kiss on the side of Kieren’s neck, tasting the pulse point there (can’t taste anything but the moan he gets in return, almost feels it resonating through the cartilage of the teen’s throat) and then repeats it on Kieren’s lips (pliant and turning reddish already).

He gently touches his nose to Kieren’s. “So… do you want to do this?” he asks in a low rumble, flexing his fingers over the boy’s belly just to make sure his message is absolutely clear.

Kieren's eyes are huge as saucers, the greyish-blueish-yellow of what his irises used to be only starting to shrink back to its original size and tinting brown. His breathing is quicker now and a slight pink flush is standing out over his cheeks. His gaze is open and honest, warm like honey, and he stares into Simon’s eyes for a few seconds before blinking a few times and finally nodding.

“Yes,” he says, maybe a bit unsure at first, but then he smiles brightly and kisses Simon with passion. Their teeth clatter softly. "Yes, please," he whispers as he pushes his fingers into Simon’s hair and around his jaw. The skin under his fingertips is a bit rougher than he’d expect, the stubble that isn’t visible on Simon’s cheeks still palpable to his newly found sense of touch. Suddenly, Kieren cannot get enough of it.

“Good,” Simon murmurs and covers his lover’s lips with his own again. He lets the kiss linger for a while and then his other hand, the one that isn’t still busy exploring the boy’s midsection, works its way under his back. The following pull brings Kieren’s chest a bit higher, off from the mattress, closer for Simon’s ministrations and draws a slight gasp of surprise from him. “I want to hear what your heart thinks of what I’m going to do with you.”

“O-kay…” Kieren breathes, eyes falling closed in bliss as Simon’s lips latch themselves onto his neck again. Then, his earlobe is between Simon’s lip-wrapped teeth.

“Tell me if anything’s too much,” the Irishman whispers, and trails a line of open-mouthed kisses down his throat and stops by the slender arches of the boy’s collarbones. He can already hear Kieren’s heart beating faster as a thin layer of sweat starts picking up in the dip under Kieren’s throat. Simon licks there with the tip of his tongue and slowly lets his hand wander beyond the hem of Kieren’s pyjama bottoms.

Kieren gasps as the cold hand, only slightly warmed by the skin of his stomach before, closes around the heated flesh of his prick. The difference in temperature is grand, almost like having ice water splashed over his crotch, but it turns him on nonetheless. Simon's hand feels even more distinct on the heated flesh than he could picture ("Too tight, too tight," he gasps almost in pain and Simon immediately loosens his grip and lands his mouth over Kieren’s apologetically). They have done this before - touched pretty much all of the other one's body with fingertips and lips, got to know each other in close detail over and over again but now, everything is sharp and distinct and Kieren never experienced such a vortex of sensations at the hands of another person. Live wires buzz in his nerves where slow, peaceful currents ran just last night. They don't even have anything to help the friction and certainly are in no mind to stop and search for it. This will be over any minute now, anyway, Simon knows what he is doing, is familiar with all the pulls and twirls and how to combine them.

It's good, so good, it even extinguishes the fire that becoming alive brought to his muscles. He can vaguely feel his toes balling into themselves, knees bending, one hand grabbing the sheet and the other is in Simon's hair, pulling at it with increasing force as the older man bites gently around his clavicles, and his lungs inflate and deflate in rapid, burning succession. He's dimly aware of making noises he's probably going to be embarrassed about once this is over.

The pressure peaks then and then the world stops for a moment and crashes down again as Kieren draws a sharp breath and his eyes snap open, staring at the withered white ceiling of Amy's old bedroom, and as he comes back to himself he feels Simon sucking lightly at his chin. His muscles gradually relax but his heart still beats rapidly.

Simon kisses him deeply and keeps their bodies and faces pressed together, cold against warm, and their arms locked firmly around each other. Kieren is panting heavily, face flushed and sweaty, with a blazing look fixed on Simon's. A tired but radiant smile plays on his lips.

"Good?" Simon asks, smiling back hopefully. He doesn’t even have to lay his head on his lover’s chest to hear his heartbeat - he can see it clearly, beating away on the boy’s carotid.

“That was great,” Kieren replies, still breathless. “Amazing. You were…” His eyes close as Simon leans in to press his lips at his forehead. His body feels loosened in ways he hadn’t felt in years - gone is both the numbness of being partially deceased and the searing itch of having ceased being so - and his mind is calmer, clearer, more sated than he ever remembers it being.

Only after a while (or so it seems) he realizes how sleepy he actually is. He feels cozy and secure within Simon’s arms that are shieldíng him from the world. Slowly, the Irishman turns them both so that he’s lying on his back with Kieren nest half over him, half beside. He cannot fight the sleep any longer now, and reaching for the blanket and covering himself in it to compensate for the chill of Simon’s skin is the most complex action he’s up to for at the moment.

"That tired out, hmm?" Simon chuckles and presses his face into Kieren's hair. "I must be better than I remember," he adds playfully.  
  
"Dick," Kieren huffs, making the older man laugh openly. He shifts around, settling into a more comfortable position, now fully draped across Simon's chest. "Just wait when I get some sleep. Just wait. You'll be surprised, Mr Twelfth Disciple."

"Yes, I'm quite sure of that, Kieren," Simon agrees. "You surprise me every single day."

Kieren hums softly in reply, already lost in sleep as his body slowly goes boneless.

"My incredible man," Simon whispers into the gingerish strands, and closes his eyes to rest.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you liked this fic, please sign the petitions [ here ](https://www.change.org/p/amazon-amazon-give-in-the-flesh-a-new-home?just_created=true)  
> and [ here](https://www.change.org/p/netflix-netflix-give-in-the-flesh-a-new-home/share?after_sign_exp=default&just_signed=true). If you didn't like the story but liked the show, please sign the petitions anyway. Also please tweet with the #RenewInTheFlesh tag to [AmazonVideoUK](https://twitter.com/AmazonVideoUK) and [NetflixUK](https://twitter.com/NetflixUK).
> 
> Thank you!


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